Windows 8 Metro support

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Sönke Ludwig" <sludwig at outerproduct.org> wrote in message 
news:jlv3c2$10rn$1 at digitalmars.com...
> (IMO) one of the biggest obstacles for truly broad adoption of D currently 
> is the weak platform support on end user platforms. The two mobile 
> platforms that came up recently (iOS and Android) are two examples. And 
> indeed I think that support for mobile platforms could be a real stepping 
> stone because of D's extraordinary convenience and language power - the 
> alternatives to C/C++ are pretty thin here and cross-platform development 
> in general has come to a grinding halt recently with all the proprietary 
> languages and APIs. If D could step up here...
>
> But mobile platforms aside, Windows support is something that in general 
> has always been neglected a bit, especially regarding 64-bit support. 
> Starting with Windows 8 there will arise additional problems because Metro 
> application will only be able/allowed to use the COM based WinRT and the 
> VisualStudio runtime. DMD with its use of snn.lib is out of the game here, 
> just as the any other runtime library.
>
> Right now, if we don't catch up here, D will slowly degrade to a pure 
> server and command line application language which surely wouldn't do it 
> justice.
>
> In consequence this means that there is one more reason to raise the 
> priority of COFF output from DMD (together with 64-bit codegen) - or 
> possibly the alternative to make OptLink COFF-capable to at least be able 
> to somehow link against the VS runtime.
>
> Another such thing - although this can be worked around - would be direct 
> support for Objective-C classes like in Michel Fortin's dmd modification. 
> I think these GUI application related functionalities are by far the most 
> important things for D's mass adoption. And personally, I would even be 
> willing to donate a (for me) considerable amount of money to help bringing 
> this forward because many things I would like to realize with D are 
> currently (almost) impossible.

Aside from the Win8 stuff (only because I have a hard time believing Win32 
won't work on Win8), I strongly agree will all of this.